Queen of the Dead

by Ty Drago

  A workable plan.

  What could go wrong?

  Helene left the watchtower the same way she’d come in—via the cable. Sharyn and I took the stairs. These led down into a big, round, empty room that once upon a time had been the prison library. From here, a lone door opened onto a railed walkway overlooking Cell Block Seven.

  We could already hear noises from downstairs.

  They were coming or getting ready to come.

  The dead.

  “See them steps?” Sharyn whispered, pointing to a couple of metal staircases that led down from the walkway to the floor of the cellblock. “That’s how they’ll hit us. You take the top of one. I’ll take the other. Wait until they’re halfway up before you start shootin’.”

  I nodded and went to the indicated spot. Sharyn did the same, raising her radio to her lips. “Sound off, Angels.”

  “Angel Two in position,” Chuck radioed.

  “Angel Three in position,” Burt radioed.

  “Angel Four in position,” Katie radioed.

  “Angel Five in position,” Helene radioed.

  In case you’re wondering, I was Angel Six. Low rung on the seniority ladder.

  Sharyn’s manner turned thoughtful. When she next spoke, her voice had softened, with much of its trademark mischief gone. “Listen up, Undertakers. We’re about to go into combat. I ain’t gonna ask you if you’re scared. I know y’all are scared. I’m scared. We got even numbers in this fight…one-on-one. But we also got surprise, and that can make all the difference. We’re gonna do this, Undertakers. We’re gonna remember what we’re fightin’ and why we’re fightin’ them. Then we’re gonna turn our fear into anger and use it to hit these wormbags harder’n we ever hit ’em before.”

  I listened. We all listened.

  The Boss Angel said, “This time…for the first time…some of these Deaders won’t be goin’ home. Use your anger, Undertakers. Let it make you sharp. Let it make you ready. Let it make you mean.”

  “Mean,” I echoed.

  Then, one by one, the rest of the Angels repeated this one-word mantra.

  We’d all heard this speech before or some version of it. Sharyn used it a lot—and with good reason: it worked.

  Still, my heart had begun to hammer, and my throat felt desert dry.

  “We do this right,” Sharyn concluded, “and chances are the Corpses won’t know what hit ’em. Y’all dig?”

  “Angel Two digs,” Chuck radioed.

  “Angel Three digs,” Burt radioed.

  “Angel Four digs,” Katie radioed.

  “Angel Five digs,” Helene radioed.

  The Boss Angel gave me a pointed look.

  “Angel Six digs,” I replied, though I could have told her nobody said “dig” anymore. At least not since disco had died.

  But this was Sharyn.

  “Cool,” Sharyn said. “Stand by…”

  Ever seen zombie movies where the monsters come shambling along, moaning and with their arms extended, like they want a hug? Well, that’s what I was expecting, moment by moment, as I stood atop that staircase with my Super Soaker poised and ready. It was one of the small Super Soakers, as the big ones were hard to conceal and wouldn’t have worked well with our ladder trick.

  A calculated risk—trading firepower for the all-important element of surprise.

  Except the surprise-ees weren’t showing up for the party.

  A full minute passed.

  “Somethin’ ain’t right,” Sharyn muttered.

  “We heard them,” I whispered to her. “Didn’t we?”

  “Yeah,” she said. She frowned down at the archway leading from Cell Block Seven into the hub. Both of us listened hard. Nothing.

  Sharyn’s wrist radio cracked. Chuck’s voice sounded edgy and impatient. “Hey, Boss. We doin’ this or what?”

  “Hold up,” Sharyn told him, told us all. Then she gestured for me to stay put and headed down the staircase. She moved slowly, with catlike grace, her sword poised and rock steady in her hands. I covered her with the Super Soaker, ready to fire the moment one of the dead appeared.

  None did.

  Six of them, Dead Lady Cop had said.

  I still didn’t think she’d been lying, but she’d definitely held something back.

  Sharyn passed through what had once been the security gate at the mouth of the cell block. Then she pressed herself against the cold concrete archway that marked the hub’s threshold. Her eyes flicked to mine.

  I swallowed dryly and gave her a nod. “I’ve got you covered.”

  She nodded back. “I know, little bro.”

  Then she peered around the corner and into the hub.

  “Oh fudge!” I heard her yelp.

  Then something grabbed her, yanking her out of view.

  Something big.

  It happened so suddenly that for a second or two, my mind barely registered it. But then, panic—cold and electric—laced down my back. Barking Sharyn’s name, I took the stairs three at a time, bounding down and out through the gate in the span of a few heartbeats.

  Beyond it, the hub was brightly lit—a circular room about thirty feet across, with pipes and electrical cabling running across the ceiling and a polished tile floor. Its walls were lined with numbered doors, each one leading to a different cell block.

  And the dead were here.

  And they weren’t surprised.

  There were six of them, just as promised, all in various states of decay. Some were moist, like the cop in the alley. Others were flaky, like the one in the watchtower. Every one of them had milky eyes set into rotting skulls—eyes that focused on me as I entered. Empty eyes, except for the hatred that radiated from them.

  And all of them wore yellow raincoats.

  These were of the heavy vinyl variety, like the kind firefighters wear, with hoods that covered most of the wearer’s face. The moment I saw the Deaders, I instinctively fired, blasting a hard stream at the nearest of them, a tall Type Two who stood right at the door to Cell Block One.

  The saltwater bounced harmlessly off the thick vinyl.

  The Corpse grinned at me, maggots dribbling out from between his teeth.

  I froze where I stood, rooted in place by shock and horror. I knew I couldn’t afford it. Angel training: In combat, keep moving. No matter what happens, never stop moving. But seeing a Corpse in what amounted to anti-saltwater armor had shaken me down to my shoes.

  Then a voice called, “Watch it, little bro!”

  Instinctively, I ducked as an arm, draped in yellow vinyl, whipped through the air where my head had been just a moment before. I pivoted and fired at the second attacker. He was shorter than the first one and flakier, his sunken eyes and desiccated gray skin barely visible beneath his hood. My stream of water bounced off his chest as he came at me again, batting away my Super Soaker. It flew from my grasp and hit the stone wall, cracking and spilling its contents.

  We’re gonna die here.

  I pushed the thought away and retreated, putting some breathing room between me and my two attackers. At the same time, I looked for Sharyn.

  She was on the other side of the hub, surrounded by four Corpses. They all had guns, being dressed as cops and all, but of course they’d never draw them. Deaders don’t use weapons ever. Tom thinks its a culture thing. Like the others, these wore raincoats too, and they circled the dreadlocked girl like a pack of wolves. The Angel Boss brandished Vader, its blade glinting in the artificial light, her dark eyes darting everywhere at once. Most of the Deaders were Type Threes—smelly, with tissues halfway melted into putrid ooze that drained off them like sweat.

  They were pretty nasty.

  But the fourth guy.

  Now I knew what had grabbed Sharyn back at the ar
chway to Cell Block Seven. And I finally understood why Dead Lady Cop had seemed so coy.

  She’d known what was waiting for us down here.

  He was a Type Two—and he was a giant; there’s just no other word for it. Seeing him, I couldn’t image where the Queen had found such a body. He had to be six-eight at least—maybe more. Three hundred and fifty pounds of purple, bloated dead man, squeezed into a raincoat meant for someone half his size. His legs were tree trunks, his arms as thick as my whole body. He towered over the rest of us, his massive, yellow-hooded head nearly touching the ceiling.

  And, from Sharyn’s expression, she was way more worried about this dude than the others.

  I didn’t blame her.

  Where in God’s name are Helene and the others?

  Then I remembered: they hadn’t been called! Sharyn’s last order to them had been to “hold up,” and given her current circumstances, I guessed she hadn’t found an opportunity to radio anything different.

  So, with my own two Deaders closing in, I raised my wrist and called into the open channel: “Angels! Get in here! Now!”

  Someone replied, “On our way!” I thought it might be Helene, but I wasn’t sure. And I suppose it didn’t matter.

  At the same time, one of the Threes surrounding Sharyn spotted an opening and surged forward, his sloppy hands reaching for what he assumed to be the girl’s unguarded back. What he didn’t know was that Sharyn had twice as many eyes as anyone else. She spun on her heel and slashed with Vader. The Corpse’s body took two more steps, but his head went the other way.

  Then, before he’d even hit the ground, the Boss Angel ducked a swing of the giant’s arm and drove the point of her sword through the throat of another of the Type Threes. A quick twist later, and his spinal cord was severed.

  He went down like the lifeless lump of meat he was.

  Neither of them was dead, of course; only a Ritter could do that. But both Corpses were down for the count and would stay that way—completely immobile—until their Deader buddies came to their rescue.

  Good news for Sharyn.

  But I still had my own problems.

  Two Corpses—sticky and flaky—came at me, taking their sweet time about it. And why not? I was unarmed as far as they could see. I retreated until my back met stone. Then I scrambled through my coat and came out with my pocketknife and my Ritter. With my pocketknife in my left hand, I pressed its 2 button, activating the Taser.

  The syringe was in my right.

  An image of Dead Lady Cop in the watchtower flashed through my mind. Helene had killed her—forever and always. That’s what Ritters did.

  Could I do that? I mean, it was one thing to cripple them the way Sharyn had done with her sword just now. But it was another to kill—really, permanently kill—the being inside them. Wasn’t it?

  Shouldn’t it be?

  But I’d killed Booth.

  I swallowed.

  The flaky guy came in first, reaching for me with hands like bones wrapped in parchment. As they got close, I could see the flesh on them ripple weirdly.

  Picking my moment, I dodged under his arm and pressed my Taser into his pit. For a second, I worried that the raincoat might protect him. It didn’t. His entire body jolted from the shock.

  Then the skin on his hands split, and beetles tumbled out. Dozens of them. Hundreds. A fountain of small black bugs. They poured over me, tumbling over my neck and shoulders and getting into my hair. As the Deader toppled forward, I leapt clear, yelling my head off and slapping at the insects with both hands.

  In my revulsion, however, I stupidly dropped my Ritter and my pocketknife.

  And the other Corpse fell on me.

  Chapter 11

  The Tide of Battle

  He brought me down, wrapping his arms around me.

  I hit the floor hard, slamming my head against the tile. Immediately, the room seemed to tilt. Then dead hands, sticky with juices I didn’t want to think about, snaked around my neck. The Corpse’s rotting visage loomed before me, his eyes gleaming and his mouth opening insanely wide, like shark’s jaws. My head was spinning, and it was all I could do to brace my forearm under his chin, trying to keep him from biting me.

  The Deader’s black tongue lolled out from between receding lips. His teeth, dripping maggots, snapped downward toward my face.

  Then he stopped.

  His expression turned bewildered—right before he exploded.

  “Ugh!” I heard Chuck Binelli exclaim as bits of dead guy covered us both.

  For fleeting seconds, I stared up into a different face, a face wholly alien, wholly evil. It had no weight, no solid matter at all, but it did have eyes, which seemed to burn me with their gaze. There was hatred there. But there was also terror. Awful terror.

  Whatever this thing was, it knew it was dying.

  And then it was gone.

  Leaving pieces of his stolen body up my nose and in my mouth.

  Rolling over, I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees and vomited. My head pounded, and the world seemed to spin worse than ever.

  Across the room, Helene, Katie, and Burt rushed to Sharyn’s aid—though I saw each of them hesitate, just for a moment, when they caught sight of the giant.

  Fear flashed across their faces.

  “I hit the sweet spot!” Chuck exclaimed. “First time! Hey…you okay?”

  I nodded. Then I vomited again. I felt like I’d been hit with a hammer and then dipped in a bucket of chum.

  “Zapped…the other one…” I sputtered. “My…Ritter.”

  “I’m on it,” he said. Then, sounding apprehensive, he added, “Will…these dudes are wearing raincoats!”

  Are they? I thought bitterly. I hadn’t noticed.

  Burt went for the giant, his own Ritter out and ready. But the big guy saw him coming and moved with surprising speed, swatting the boy aside as if he were a pesky mosquito. Burt crashed to the tile floor, momentarily stunned. The giant advanced on him, but Sharyn sprang between them, brandishing her sword.

  Meanwhile, Katie and Helene focused on the remaining Type Three, cornering the smelly cadaver against a large bronze plaque that was mounted into the stone wall of the hub. Both girls had their Ritters out. As Helene feigned a thrust, drawing the Deader’s attention, Katie moved in and smoothly planted hers into the Corpse’s belly, right through the raincoat.

  Hissing—yeah, they hiss sometimes—he swiped at her, forcing her to jump back, leaving the syringe’s plunger unplunged. Seeing this, Helene stepped up and executed a solid roundhouse kick, slamming her sneakered foot into the Type Three’s middle section.

  Both girls jumped back.

  “Watch this, Katie!” I heard Helene say.

  The Corpse exploded—a wet popping sound.

  A moment later, I heard a similar sound—though drier and raspier. I looked back to see that Chuck had found my fallen Ritter and used it on the flaky guy I’d zapped.

  Apparently, the only one who had a problem killing these things was me.

  But the good news was that five of the six were down.

  For one glorious moment, I actually thought we had this battle locked up.

  Wrong.

  The giant, maybe reacting to what had just happened to his buds, went completely off the rails. He threw himself at Sharyn, who lifted her blade to meet him. Vader went right into the big guy’s chest, undoubtedly piercing his heart. But what good was that when the darned thing wasn’t beating anyway?

  Cursing, Sharyn tried to pull it out. But once again, the enormous Type Two proved himself to be amazingly fast. He snatched up the Boss Angel, wrapping his bloated, putrid hands around her upper body and pinning her arms. Then, lifting her off her feet, he squeezed brutally.

  Sharyn cried out and dropped her
sword. The giant kicked it away.

  Then he threw her.

  This wasn’t the offhand slap he’d given Burt, who still lay dazed on the floor. This was vicious and deliberate, and it had all the monster’s strength behind it. Sharyn flew across the room, her arms and legs flailing.

  Then she slammed headfirst into the far wall. I actually heard the crack, and the sound of it made my blood go cold.

  Katie screamed, “Sharyn!” Then she ran around the giant and toward where the Boss Angel’s broken body lay in a heap on the tiles.

  The huge Type Two whirled on Helene.

  He spoke in English, his voice as deep as thunder. “What did you just do, girl?”

  Helene stared up at him, her face pale. Bravely, she raised her Ritter. “The same thing I’m gonna do to you!” she exclaimed.

  She jabbed at him, but he knocked the syringe from her grasp with a single swat of his massive paw. Then he grabbed her by the throat.

  “No!” I screamed. I tried to rise to my feet only to lose my balance and fall back. I didn’t vomit this time, just heaved a little, which I suppose was a sign of improvement. But my head still swam.

  Fortunately, Chuck and Burt were in better shape. They closed in on the giant from behind. Chuck delivered a well-placed kick to the monster’s lower back that he completely ignored. Then Burt pushed Chuck aside and slammed his Ritter into the Corpse’s unguarded kidney.

  An instant later, he stepped back, his face reddening.

  The plunger was gone from the syringe and all its saltwater drained off. It must have broken when he’d been knocked down.

  “Crap,” I heard him mutter.

  The giant lifted Helene off the floor, one of his bloated, snow shovel–sized hands locked around her slender throat. At the same time, his other arm swung like a baseball bat, catching Burt in the side of the head and knocking him into Chuck. Both of them went down hard, the wind knocked out of them.

  Then the Type Two looked over at me, and reading the horror on my face, he grinned.

  There were no bugs in his teeth. In fact, he had no teeth at all. His mouth looked like a twisted black pit that had been dug into the purplish, slimy surface of his face.